Idealab - Picasa

Key player in the conception, creation and execution of new business ideas. Primary responsibilities included supporting the development team with rapid prototypes, product specification, user interface design and managing projects through development. I was responsible for bringing Picasa 1.0 to market including management of a cross continental team, rolling out software releases, usability testing, strategy and product management, logo, naming and identity direction, building the help system, website direction, and online marketing initiatives. Other projects worked on included Paythrough micropayments, GeoTracker golf-cart tracking location software and other early stage ideas.

I was one of the first people brought onto the Picasa project right after its inception at Idealab Boston. This is an early user scenario flow I created that we used when developing out the concept. I was the producer for the project and responsible for getting managing the project and releasing 1.0. I worked on the UX, user testing, developing personas, contributed to the naming, branding, and marketing of the product.

Here are a couple of wireframes from a usability study we ran before finally abandoning the carousel style navigation in the main UI for Picasa. This experience stayed on as the timeline mode but it was very hard to use for utilitarian purposes. We all finally let go of trying to make it work and Picasa to this day is still one of the most used digital photo organizers.

Included here are a couple of ads I created for Picasa 1.0 download. I managed the online marketing for two months when we first launched.

The name space for photo products is very crowded from a trademark and a URL standpoint. We went through many options before settling on Picasa which was the brainchild of Tom Hughes - VP of Design at Idealab.

The first version of Picasa we did was a smaller than average box. We distributed it through WalMart and sales were down even though we were less expensive. We learned quickly that we needed to feel more substantial in our box design and shelf presence prompting us to hold a box-off study.